interest of the cemetery. The arched and vaulted walls of the burial
recesses are supported by massive pillars and pilasters made of
thigh-bones and skulls; the whole material of the structure appears to
be of a similar kind; and the knobs and embossed ornaments of this
strange architecture are represented by the joints of the spine, and the
more delicate tracery by the smaller bones of the human frame. The
summits of the arches are adorned with entire skeletons, looking as if
they were wrought most skilfully in bas-relief. There is no possibility
of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect, combined with a
certain artistic merit, nor how much perverted ingenuity has been shown
in this queer way, nor what a multitude of dead monks, through how many
hundred years, must have contributed their bony framework to build up
these great arches of mortality. On some of the skulls there are
inscriptions, purporting that such a monk, who formerly made use of that
particular head-piece, died on such a day and year; but vastly the
greater number are piled up indistinguishably into the architectural
design like the many deaths that make up the one glory of a victory.
In the side walls of the vaults are niches where skeleton monks sit or
stand, clad in the brown habits that they wore in life, and labeled
with their names and the dates of their decease. Their skulls (some
quite bare, and others still covered with yellow skin, and hair that has
known the earth-damps) look out from beneath their hoods, grinning,
hideously repulsive. One reverend father has his mouth wide open, as if
he had died in the midst of a howl of terror and remorse, which perhaps
is even now screeching through eternity. As a general thing, however,
these frocked and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view of
their position, and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest. But
the cemetery of the Capuchins is no place to nourish celestial hopes;
the soul sinks forlorn and wretched under all this burden of dusty
death; the holy earth from Jerusalem, so imbued is it with mortality,
has grown as barren of the flowers of Paradise as it is of earthly weeds
and grass. Thank Heaven for its blue sky; it needs a long, upward gaze
to give us back our faith. Not here can we feel ourselves immortal,
where the very altars in these chapels of horrible consecration are
heaps of human bones.
THE BURIAL PLACE OF KEATS AND SHELLEY[24]
BY NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS
A beautiful pyramid, a hundred and thirteen feet high, built into the
ancient wall of Rome, is the proud "Sepulcher of Caius Cestius." It is
the most imperishable of the antiquities, standing as perfect after
eighteen hundred years as if it were built but yesterday. Just beyond
it, on the declivity of a hill, over the ridge of which the wall passes,
crowning it with two moldering towers, lies the Protestant
burying-ground.
It looks toward Rome, which appears in the distance, between Mount
Aventine and a small hill called Mont Testaccio, and leaning to the
south-east, the sun lies warm and soft upon its banks, and the grass and
wild flowers are there the earliest and tallest of the Campagna. I have
been here to-day, to see the graves of Keats and Shelley. With a
cloudless sky and the most delicious air ever breathed, we sat down upon
the marble slab laid over the ashes of poor Shelley, and read his own
lament over Keats, who sleeps just below, at the foot of the hill.
The cemetery is rudely formed into three terraces, with walks between,
and Shelley's grave and one other, without a name, occupy a small nook
above, made by the projections of a moldering wall-tower, and crowded
with ivy and shrubs, and a peculiarly fragrant yellow flower, which
perfumes the air around for several feet. The avenue by which you ascend
from the gate is lined with high bushes of the marsh-rose in the most
luxuriant bloom, and all over the cemetery the grass is thickly mingled
with flowers of every dye. In his preface to his lament over Keats,
Shelley says:
"He was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants,
under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and
towers, now moldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient
Rome. It is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with
violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that
one should be buried in so sweet a place."
If Shelley had chosen his own grave at the time, he would have selected
the very spot where he has since been laid--the most sequestered and
flowery nook of the place he describes so feelingly.
On the second terrace of the declivity are ten or twelve graves, two of
which bear the names of Americans who have died in Rome. A portrait
carved in bas-relief, upon one of the slabs, told me, without the
inscription, that one whom I had known was buried beneath. The slightly
rising mound was covered with small violets, half hidden by the grass.
It takes away from the pain with which one stands over the grave of an
acquaintance or a friend, to see the sun lying so warm upon it, and the
flowers springing so profusely and cheerfully. Nature seems to have
cared for those who have died so far from home, binding the earth gently
over them with grass, and decking it with the most delicate flowers. We
descended to the lower enclosure at the foot of the slight declivity.
The first grave here is that of Keats. The inscription runs thus:
"This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet, who,
on his death-bed in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power
of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tomb: 'Here
lies one whose name was written in water.'"
He died at Rome in 1821. Every reader knows his history and the cause of
his death. Shelley says, in the preface to his elegy:
"The savage criticism on his poems, which appeared in the "Quarterly
Review," produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the
agitation thus originated ended in a rupture of a blood-vessel in the
lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments,
from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were
ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted."
Keats was, no doubt, a poet of very uncommon promise. He had all the
wealth of genius within him, but he had not learned, before he was
killed by criticism, the received, and, therefore, the best manner of
producing it for the eye of the world. Had he lived longer, the strength
and richness which break continually through the affected style of
"Endymion" and "Lamia" and his other poems, must have formed themselves
into some noble monuments of his powers. As it is, there is not a poet
living who could surpass the material of his "Endymion"--a poem, with
all its faults, far more full of beauties. But this is not the place for
criticism. He is buried fitly for a poet, and sleeps beyond criticism
now. Peace to his ashes!
EXCURSIONS NEAR ROME[25]
BY CHARLES DICKENS
The excursions in the neighborhood of Rome are charming, and would be
full of interest were it only for the changing views they afford of the
wild Campagna. But every inch of ground in every direction is rich in
associations, and in natural beauties. There is Albano, with its lovely
lake and wooded shore, and with its wine, that certainly has not
improved since the days of Horace, and in these times hardly justifies
his panegyric. There is squalid Tivoli, with the river Anio, diverted
from its course, and plunging down, headlong, some eighty feet in search
of it, with its picturesque Temple of the Sibyl, perched high on a crag;
its minor waterfalls glancing and sparkling in the sun; and one good
cavern yawning darkly, where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots
on, low down under beetling rocks.
There, too, is the Villa d'Este, deserted and decaying among groves of
melancholy pine and cypress-trees, where it seems to lie in state. Then,
there is Frascati, and, on the steep above it, the ruins of Tusculum,
where Cicero lived, and wrote, and adorned his favorite house (some
fragments of it may yet be seen there), and where Cato was born. We saw
its ruined amphitheater on a gray, dull day, when a shrill March wind
was blowing, and when the scattered stones of the old city lay strewn
about the lonely eminence, as desolate and dead as the ashes of a
long-extinguished fire.
One day we walked out, a little party of three, to Albano, fourteen
miles distant; possest by a great desire to go there by the ancient
Appian Way, long since ruined and overgrown. We started at half-past
seven in the morning, and within an hour or so were out upon the open
Campagna. For twelve miles we went climbing on, over an unbroken
succession of mounds, and heaps, and hills of ruin. Tombs and temples,
overthrown and prostrate; small fragments of columns, friezes,
pediments; great blocks of granite and marble; moldering arches
grass-grown and decayed; ruin enough to build a spacious city from; lay
strewn about us. Sometimes loose walls, built up from these fragments by
the shepherds, came across our path; sometimes a ditch, between two
mounds of broken stones, obstructed our progress; sometimes, the
fragments themselves, rolling from beneath our feet, made it a toilsome
matter to advance; but it was always ruin. Now, we tracked a piece of
the old road above the ground; now traced it underneath a grassy
covering, as if that were its grave; but all the way was ruin.
In the distance, ruined aqueducts went stalking on their giant course
along the plain; and every breath of wind that swept toward us, stirred
early flowers and grasses, springing up, spontaneously, on miles of
ruin. The unseen larks above us, who alone disturbed the awful silence,
had their nests in ruin; and the fierce herdsmen, clad in sheepskins,
who now and then scowled out upon us from their sleeping nooks, were
housed in ruin. The aspect of the desolate Campagna in one direction,
where it was most level, reminded me of an American prairie; but what is
the solitude of a region where men have never dwelt, to that of a
desert, where a mighty race have left their footprints in the earth from
which they have vanished; where the resting-places of their dead have
fallen like their dead; and the broken hour-glass of Time is but a heap
of idle dust! Returning by the road at sunset, and looking, from the
distance, on the course we had taken in the morning, I almost felt (as I
had felt when I first saw it, at that hour) as if the sun would never
rise again, but looked its last, that night, upon a ruined world.
To come again to Rome, by moonlight, after such an expedition, is a
fitting close to such a day. The narrow streets, devoid of footways, and
choked, in every obscure corner, by heaps of dung-hill-rubbish, contrast
so strongly, in their cramped dimensions, and their filth and darkness,
with the broad square before some haughty church; in the center of
which, a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of
the Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it; or perhaps
an ancient pillar, with its honored statue overthrown, supports a
Christian saint; Marcus Aurelius giving place to Paul, and Trajan to St.
Peter. Then, there are the ponderous buildings reared from the
spoliation of the Coliseum, shutting out the moon, like mountains; while
here and there are broken arches and rent walls, through which it gushes
freely, as the life comes pouring from a wound. The little town of
miserable houses, walled, and shut in by barred gates, is the quarter
where the Jews are locked up nightly, when the clock strikes eight--a
miserable place, densely populated, and reeking with bad odors, but
where the people are industrious and money-getting. In the daytime, as
you make your way along the narrow streets, you see them all at
work--upon the pavement, oftener than in their dark and frowsy shops;
furbishing old clothes, and driving bargains.
Crossing from these patches of thick darkness out into the moon once
more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred jets, and rolling
over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and ear. In the narrow little
throat of street beyond, a booth drest out with flaring lamps, and
boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky Romans around its smoky
coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower stew; its trays of fried fish, and
its flasks of wine. As you rattle around the sharply twisting corner, a
lumbering sound is heard. The coachman stops abruptly, and uncovers, as
a van comes slowly by, preceded by a man who bears a large cross; by a
torch-bearer, and a priest; the latter chanting as he goes. It is the
dead-cart, with the bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in the
Sacred Field outside the walls, where they will be thrown into the pit
that will be covered with a stone to-night, and sealed up for a year.
But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or columns, ancient
temples, theaters, houses, porticoes or forums, it is strange to see how
every fragment, whenever it is possible, has been blended into some
modern structure, and made to serve some modern purpose--a wall, a
dwelling-place, a granary, a stable--some use for which it never was
designed, and associated with which it can not otherwise than lamely
assort.
II
FLORENCE
THE APPROACH BY CARRIAGE ROAD[26]
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Immediately after leaving Incisa, we saw the Arno, already a
considerable river, rushing between deep banks, with the greenish hue of
a duck-pond diffused through its water. Nevertheless, tho the first
impression was not altogether agreeable, we soon became reconciled to
this hue, and ceased to think it an indication of impurity; for, in
spite of it, the river is still, to a certain degree, transparent, and
is, at any rate, a mountain stream, and comes uncontaminated from its
source. The pure, transparent brown of the New England rivers is the
most beautiful color; but I am content that it should be peculiar to
them.
Our afternoon's drive was through scenery less striking than some which
we had traversed, but still picturesque and beautiful. We saw deep
valleys and ravines, with streams at the bottom; long, wooded hillsides,
rising far and high, and dotted with white dwellings, well toward the
summits. By and by, we had a distant glimpse of Florence, showing its
great dome and some of its towers out of a sidelong valley, as if we
were between two great waves of the tumultuous sea of hills; while, far
beyond, rose in the distance the blue peaks of three or four of the
Apennines, just on the remote horizon. There being a haziness in the
atmosphere, however, Florence was little more distinct to us than the
Celestial City was to Christian and Hopeful, when they spied at it from
the Delectable Mountains.
Keeping steadfastly onward, we ascended a winding road, and passed a
grand villa, standing very high, and surrounded with extensive grounds.
It must be the residence of some great noble; and it has an avenue of
poplars or aspens, very light and gay, and fit for the passage of the
bridal procession, when the proprietor or his heir brings home his
bride; while in another direction from the same front of the palace
stretches an avenue or grove of cypresses, very long and exceedingly
black and dismal, like a train of gigantic mourners. I have seen few
things more striking, in the way of trees, than this grove of cypresses.
From this point we descended, and drove along an ugly, dusty avenue,
with a high brick wall on one side or both, till we reached the gate of
Florence, into which we were admitted with as little trouble as
custom-house officers, soldiers, and policemen can possibly give. They
did not examine our luggage, and even declined a fee, as we had already
paid one at the frontier custom-house. Thank heaven, and the Grand
Duke!
As we hoped that the Casa del Bello had been taken for us, we drove
thither in the first place, but found that the bargain had not been
concluded. As the house and studio of Mr. Powers[27] were just on the
opposite side of the street, I went to it, but found him too much
engrossed to see me at the moment; so I returned to the "vettura," and
we told Gaetano to carry us to a hotel. He established us at the Albergo
della Fontana, a good and comfortable house. Mr. Powers called in the
evening--a plain personage, characterized by strong simplicity and warm
kindliness, with an impending brow, and large eyes, which kindle as he
speaks. He is gray, and slightly bald, but does not seem elderly, nor
past his prime. I accept him at once as an honest and trustworthy man,
and shall not vary from this judgment. Through his good offices, the
next day we engaged the Casa del Bello. This journey from Rome has been
one of the brightest and most uncareful interludes of my life; we have
all enjoyed it exceedingly, and I am happy that our children have it to
look back upon.
THE OLD PALACE AND THE LOGGIA[28]
BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Every great capital has its eye; at Rome it is the Campo Vaccino; at
Paris, the Boulevard des Italiens; at Venice, the Place St. Mark; at
Madrid, the Prado; at London, the Strand; at Naples, the Via di Toledo.
Rome is more Roman, Paris more Parisian, Venice more Venetian, Madrid
more Spanish, London more English, Naples more Neapolitan, in that
privileged locality than anywhere else. The eye of Florence is the Place
of the Grand Duke--a beautiful eye. In fact, suppress that Place and
Florence has no more meaning--it might be another city. It is at that
Place, therefore, that every traveler ought to begin, and, moreover, had
he not that intention, the tide of pedestrians would carry him and the
streets themselves would conduct him thither.
The first aspect of the Place of the Grand Duke has an effect so
charming, so picturesque, so complete, that you comprehend all at once
into what an error the modern capitals like London, Paris, St.
Petersburg, fall in forming, under the pretext of squares, in their
compact masses, immense empty spaces upon which they run aground all
possible and impossible modes of decoration. One can touch with his
finger the reason which makes of the Carrousel and Place de la Concorde,
great empty fields which absorb fountains, statues, arches of triumph,
obelisks, candelabra, and little gardens. All these embellishments, very
pretty on paper, very agreeable also, without doubt, viewed from a
balloon, are almost lost for the spectator who can not grasp the whole,
his height only rising five feet above the ground.
A square, in order to produce a beautiful effect, ought not to be too
big; it is also necessary that it should be bordered by varied monuments
of diverse elevations. The Place of the Grand Duke at Florence unites
all these conditions; bordered by monuments regular in themselves, but
different from one another, it is pleasing to the eye without wearying
by a cold symmetry.
The Palace of the Seigneurie, or Old Palace, which by its imposing mass
and severe elegance at first attracts the attention, occupies a corner
of the Place, instead of the middle. This idea, a happy one, in our
opinion, regrettable for those who only see architectural beauty in
geometrical regularity, is not fortuitous; it has a reason wholly
Florentine. In order to obtain perfect symmetry, it would have been
necessary to build upon the detested soil of the Ghibelline house,
rebellious and proscribed by the Uberti; something that the Guelph
faction, then all-powerful, were not willing to allow the architect,
Arnolfo di Lapo, to do. Learned men contest the truth of this tradition;
we will not discuss here the value of their objections. It is certain,
however, that the Old Palace gains greatly by the singularity of this
location and also leaves space for the great Fountain of Neptune and
the equestrian statue of Cosmo the First.
The name of fortress would be more appropriate than any other, for the
Old Palace; it is a great mass of stone, without columns, without
frontal, without order of architecture. Time has gilded the walls with
beautiful vermilion tints which the pure blue of the sky sets off
marvelously, and the whole structure has that haughty and romantic
aspect which accords well with the idea that one forms for oneself of
that old Palace of the Seigneurie, the witness, since the date of its
erection in the thirteenth century, of so many intrigues, tumults,
violent acts, and crimes. The battlements of the palace, cut square,
show that it was built to that height by the Guelph faction; the
trifurcated battlements of the belfry indicate a sudden change on the
accession to power of the Ghibelline faction.
Guelphs and Ghibellines detested each other so violently that they
exprest their opinions in their garments, in the cut of their hair, in
their arms, in their manner of fortifying themselves. They feared
nothing so much as to be captured by one another, and differed as much
as they possibly could. They had a special salutation after the manner
of the Freemasons and the Companions of Duty. The opinions of the
ancient owners of the Old Palace at Florence can be recognized by this
characteristic; the walls of the city are crenelated squarely in the
Guelph fashion, and the tower on the ramparts has the Ghibelline
battlements of swallow-tail shape.
The Vecchio Palace has for its basement several steps which were used in
former times as a species of tribune, from the top of which the
magistrates and demagogs harangued the people. Two colossal statues of
marble--Hercules slaying Cacus, by Bandinelli, and David the Conqueror
of Goliath, by Michael Angelo--mount near the door their age-long watch,
like two gigantic sentinels whom someone has forgotten to relieve. The
statue of David by Michael Angelo besides the inconvenience there is in
representing under a gigantic form a Biblical hero of notoriously small
size, seemed to us a trifle common and heavy, a rare defect with this
master; his David is a great big boy, fleshy, broad-backed, with
monstrous biceps, a market porter waiting to put a sack upon his back.
The working of the marble is remarkable and, after all, is a fine piece
of study which would do honor to any other sculptor except Michael
Angelo; but there is lacking that Olympian mastership which
characterizes the works of that superhuman sculptor.
One of the most curious features of the Old Palace is the grand salon, a
hall of enormous dimensions, which has its legend. When the Medici were
driven from Florence, in 1494, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who directed the
popular movement, proposed the idea of constructing an immense hall
where a council of a thousand citizens would elect the magistrates and
regulate the affairs of the republic. The architect Cronaca had charge
of this task and acquitted himself of it with a celerity so marvelous
that Brother Savonarola caused the rumor to spread that angels
descended from heaven to help the masons and continued at night the
interrupted work. The invention of these angels tempering the mortar and
carrying the hod is all done in the legendary style of the Middle Ages
and would furnish a charming subject for a picture to some ingenuous
painter of the school of Overbeck or of Hauser. In this rapid
construction Cronaca displayed, if not all his genius, at least all his
agility. The work has been justly admired and often consulted by
architects.
When the Medici returned to power and transferred their residence from
the Palace of the Via Larga, which they had occupied, to the Palace of
the Seigneurie, Cosmo wished to change the Council Hall into an audience
chamber, and charged the presumptuous Bacchio Bandinelli, whose designs
had attracted him, with various alterations of an important character;
but the sculptor had undoubtedly presumed too much on his talent as an
architect, and in spite of the assistance of Giuliano Baccio d'Agnolo,
whom he called to his aid, he worked for ten years without being able to
conquer the difficulties which he had created for himself.
It was Vasari who raised the ceiling several feet, finished the work and
decorated the walls with a succession of frescoes which may still be
seen, and which represent different episodes in the history of
Florence--combats, and captures of cities, the whole being a travesty of
antiquity, an intermingling of allegories. These frescos, painted with
an intrepid and learned mediocrity, display the commonplace tones,
swelling muscles and anatomical tricks in use at that epoch among
artists.